Hydrocarbon reservoirs are developed with drilling operations using a drill bit associated with a drill string rotated from the surface or using a downhole motor, or both using a downhole motor and also rotating the string from the surface. A bottom hole assembly (BHA) at the end of the drill string may include components such as drill collars, stabilizers, drilling motors and logging tools, and measuring tools. A BHA is also capable of telemetering various drilling and geological parameters to the surface facilities.
Resistance encountered by the drill string in a wellbore during drilling causes significant wear on drill string, especially often the drill bit and the BHA. Understanding how the geometry of the wellbore affects resistance on the drill string and the BHA and managing the dynamic conditions that lead potentially to failure of downhole equipment is important for enhancing efficiency and minimizing costs for drilling wells. Various conditions referred to as drilling dysfunctions that may lead to component failure include excessive torque, shocks, bit bounce, induced vibrations, bit whirl, stick-slip, among others. These conditions must be rapidly detected so that mitigation efforts are undertaken as quickly as possible, since some dysfunctions can quickly lead to tool failures.
Downhole drilling dysfunctions can cause serious operational problems that are difficult to detect or predict. The more rapidly and efficiently drilling dysfunctions are identified the more quickly they may be mitigated. Thus a need exists for efficient methods, systems and apparatuses to quickly identify and to mitigate dysfunctions during drilling operations. Rapid aggregation and analysis of data from multiple sources associated with well bore drilling operations facilitates efficient drilling operations by timely responses to drilling dysfunctions.
Accurate timing information for borehole or drill string time-series data acquired with down hole sensors are important for aggregating information from surface and down hole sensors. However, each sensor may have its own internal clock or data from many sensors may be acquired and recorded relative to multiple clocks that are not synchronized. This non-synchronization of the timing information creates problems when combining and processing data from various sensors. Additionally, sensor timing is known sometimes to be affected by various environmental factors that cause variable timing drift that may differentially impact various sensors. Many factors may render inaccurate the timing of individual sensors that then needs to be corrected or adjusted so the data may be assimilated correctly with all sensor information temporally consistent in order to accurately inform a drilling operations center about the dynamic state of the well being drilled.
Therefore, there is a need for improved methods, systems and apparatuses for the accurate adjustment of timing for sensors in downhole environments.